Catalogue description British Museum (Natural History): Department of Botany: Correspondence and Papers of Antony Gepp

This series consists of the large collection of papers of all sorts of Antony Gepp (1862-1955), removed from his room after his death. It includes correspondence, papers, offprints, artwork for publication, notes, notebooks and printed ephemera of all sorts.

The series has not been arranged or listed in detail.

Further Gepp correspondence is held in the Marine Algae Section.

Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated

The series was transferred to the archives from the Botany Library in 1989.

Custodial history: Originally housed in the Cryptogamic Herbarium.

'Mr Antony Gepp', A B Rendle. Natural History Magazine, 1: 95-96 (1927)

• People: Antony Gepp (1862-1955)
• George Robert Milne Murray (1858-1911)

Antony Gepp was born in Essex and educated at Felsted School and St John's College, Cambridge. He took the B A in 1885, and obtained an Assistant post in the Museum in January 1885. He and George Murray were between them responsible for the cryptogams, Gepp taking on the mosses and liverworts and later the marine algae. On the retirement of William Carruthers in 1895, Gepp took on the ferns as well. His official career lasted until 1927, when he retired at the age of 65. He continued to come to the Department regularly to work on ferns and other cryptogamic groups until his death in 1955, following a fall on the Museum staircase.

About 1900 Gepp married Ethel Sarel Barton (1864-1922), an algologist who was a voluntary worker in the Department.

Gepp was not a prolific writer. He contributed lists and descriptions of cryptogamic groups to a number of catalogues and expedition reports published by the Museum and elsewhere, as well as short papers and notes on fossil plants, hepatics, mosses, fungi, marine algae and ferns.